Youth Mobile Phone and Internet Use January 2015 Za'atari Camp
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Youth Mobile Phone and Internet Use January 2015 Za’atari Camp, Mafraq, Jordan November 2, 2015 Carleen Maitland, Ph.D. Brian Tomaszewski, Ph.D. Elizabeth Belding, Ph.D. Karen Fisher, Ph.D. Ying Xu Danny Iland Paul Schmitt Amirah Majid Contents Executive Summary ...................................................................................................... 3 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 5 2. Descriptive Statistics ............................................................................................... 6 2.1 Demographics ..................................................................................................... 6 2.2 Mobile and Internet Connections ........................................................................ 7 2.3 Communication Services .................................................................................. 12 2.4 Internet Use ....................................................................................................... 13 2.5 Information Services .......................................................................................... 14 2.6 Interests in Internet-based Activities ................................................................ 14 2.7 Youth Helping Behavior .................................................................................... 15 3. Multivariate Analyses ............................................................................................. 17 3.1 Explaining Differences in Online Activity Interests ......................................... 17 3.2 The Relationships between Demographics and ICT Use .................................. 19 4. Infrastructure Analysis ........................................................................................... 25 5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 29 2 Executive Summary As mobile phone and internet use in Za’atari Refugee Camp continue to grow, there is a need for a more clear understanding of the current modes of connection and patterns of use. This report provides an overview of refugee youth mobile phone and internet use as well as an infrastructure assessment. The youth analysis is based on survey data collected in January 2015 from a non-presentative sample of 157 youth. As data collection primarily occurred in youth training centers (126 cases), the outcomes are slightly biased toward that group. Based on comparisons with a sub-sample of youth from outside the centers, the center subjects are significantly more educated and more likely to be female. However, no significant differences were found in average age, English language ability, and internet use in Jordan or Syria. Data were also collected from 71 adults both at and outside youth training centers. The adults, other than being older, differ from the youth by being more heavily male, with slightly lower self-reported English language ability, and slightly better educated, with nearly 55% having some or completed university education. Where appropriate, youth versus adult comparisons are made. The definition of youth used by UNHCR and its partners is persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years. The sample has an average age of 20.16 and a fairly even gender balance, slightly favoring females (74 vs. 63). Approximately 36% of youth have attended or completed university. The majority of self-reported English language reading skills are either good or fair. In terms of handset ownership, 88% of youth own mobile handsets. In the entire sample only 21 subjects do not own a handset, but 19 of those are youth. Of youth, 85% own SIM cards, and on average each owns an average of 1.39 SIM cards. Even with reasonably high levels of ownership, and some having multiple SIMs, 80% also borrow them from friends and family. Unsurprisingly, mobile phones are the most popular medium for accessing the internet. This was true in Syria as well, but is even more so in the camp. Of the three available mobile carriers, youth overwhelmingly choose Zain. Because the quality of carrier signals can vary, we inquired as to where people most commonly access the internet and among the camp’s districts, 4 and 1 were the most popular for calling Syria. To understand the skills and experience refugees bring to the camp, we inquired about previous use. In Syria, internet use was primarily a home-based activity although the second most popular was at an internet café. In terms of communication services, WhatsApp was the most frequently used to communicate to those in both Jordan and Syria, while mobile voice was used more frequently for communicating within Jordan. However, apart from mobile voice, there is little difference in use among a variety of services when communicating with those in Jordan versus Syria. We also wanted to understand whether internet, social media and online video use differs in the camp versus when respondents lived in Syria. While online video is much less popular than internet or social media, the use of all three has increased since moving to the camp. In fact, social media use nearly doubled in intensity. Given the potential interest in expanding internet-based services to refugees, it is important to know what they do online currently and what they would like to do if high quality, low cost services were available. When asked about favorite online information sources, they offered a wide variety but six were cited most frequently: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, TV and Wikipedia, with Google being significantly 3 more popular. Without resource constraints, the youth indicated they would like more access to Instant Messaging/WhatsApp, news sources and the opportunity to communicate with people via social media. Like many youth around the globe, the skills to access online content and use social media often derive from interpersonal assistance from friends and family. In terms of providing assistance, the Za’atari youth indicated they frequently help family and friends as well as receive help. The top services for receiving help were online education, legal and health information search and news. In terms of the importance of this assistance, youth differ from adults in both the areas they deem help to be important as well as the level of importance. Our infrastructure assessment examined the mobile network service quality, particularly in the type of service provided and its reliability in terms of being able to access the network on the first try. Results show Zain and Orange base stations provided the slower EDGE connectivity more often than the faster HSDPA technology, while Umniah offered HSDPA around half of the time. This could be due to network technology or may also be a function of Zain being the most popular provider, at least among the youth in our survey. In terms of reliability, all networks experience failure to provide network connectivity on the first try to some degree, however the poorest performance on this measure was experienced by phones on the Zain network where assignments fail roughly ⅓ of the time. Based on the findings from the survey as well as the infrastructure assessment, we offer the following recommendations. First, among the youth population as represented by our survey, there is high level of internet activity and interest in a wide variety of online activities. However, continued access via mobile devices may limit the benefits and skills developed over time. Using internet-based services to solve strategic challenges such as access to information through online sources is certainly possible, at least in terms of interest and ability. Enhanced access should be pursued through a combination of actions targeting improved cellular network services by mobile carriers, complemented with a camp-wide community wireless intranet. Camp management may be able to work with the mobile carriers providing commercial services in the camp to improve service quality, reliability and bandwidth. At the same time developing a camp-wide wifi network that is not connected to the internet, will allow refugees and camp staff alike to share information and local messaging without incurring ongoing costs. Such a network may help offload traffic from the commercial mobile network, enable more efficient communications among the service providers, and provide a mechanism for serving centrally stored content such as educational and training materials throughout the camp. This report is merely the first step in what we hope will be a continuing assessment of ICT use in Za’atari. Further analyses of the current survey data are continuing, potentially providing deeper insights into the drivers of internet use. However, this study was limited in scope and the answers to some questions may require further data collection and analyses. Also, further explorations of the viability of network improvements, including the issue of managing expectations and assessing competing technologies and business models that may enable widespread internet access, could be conducted. 4 1. Introduction Increasingly, the lives of refugees are affected by the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Refugees themselves are more frequently arriving in camps with mobile phones and with computing and internet skills. The phones provide an important lifeline of information and communication with loved ones, whether they stayed behind or settled in a different